House committee kills bill to allow closing of landfill

BATON ROUGE -- Legislation that would have allowed closing the Chef Menteur Landfill if sufficient capacity for hurricane debris was available at other local dumps was killed by a House committee Monday, leaving the fate of the facility in the hands of state and local officials using existing regulations.

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The landfill opened in April amid concerns by residents of eastern New Orleans who questioned the safety of the facility next to Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in a wetlands area that flooded during Hurricane Katrina.

The facility opened with emergency authorization from several levels of government: Mayor Ray Nagin's office, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Officials with the state environmental agency have defended the opening of the landfill, saying it was necessary to have the capacity to take the massive amount of construction and demolition debris left by the storm.

At the House Environment Committee on Monday, the panel sided with the state agency, rejecting by a 4-1 vote Senate Bill 718 by Joel Chaisson II, D-Destrehan.

The legislation would have allowed parishes in the New Orleans area to develop local waste plans to specify how they would deal with hurricane debris.

The state agency would consider these plans, while also determining if there is sufficient capacity in existing landfills.

If so, any landfill opened under an emergency order, such as Chef Menteur, would be closed in 30 days unless the parish waste plan adopted by the "respective governing authority" and chief executive officer specifically allowed the facility to remain open.

 

Limiting flexibility

But Rep. Troy Hebert, D-Jeanerette, said he wasn't sure that the bill did everything proponents had hoped, noting that a provision would allow a parish government to exclude waste from outside its boundaries.

This could have posed a problem for New Orleans, which would largely depend on dumping waste in neighboring parishes if the Chef Menteur landfill were closed.

"It limits flexibility on how you dispose of waste," said Chuck Carr Brown, an assistant secretary for the Department of Environmental Quality.

During the committee discussion, Brown reiterated pledges to work more closely with the communities close to the landfill.

He said that tests of the air and water from the facility should be available this week.

But testing to determine if the debris being dumped at Chef Menteur is toxic has become a flashpoint in the debate, with local activists saying that operator Waste Management and the state have not allowed the kind of testing that could determine if unauthorized material is making its way into the dump.

Responding to citizens' concerns, Nagin decided to shut down the landfill for a few days in mid-May to allow for the testing.

But the Rev. Vien Nguyen, pastor of Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church and a leader of anti-landfill efforts, said that the state agency would not allow experts tapped by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network to perform the kind of tests they believed were necessary.

These experts believed they needed to dig into the piles within the landfill to figure out what was being dumped there.

Brown said it makes more sense to check a random selection of debris-laden trucks before they enter the landfill to determine a percentage of unauthorized material.

He said the agency wants to work with local residents to come to a compromise.

Judy McCleary, a lobbyist for Waste Management, also said that the company wanted to come up with a protocol agreeable to all parties.

Activists and local residents have said that the expanded definition of "construction and demolition debris" used by the environmental agency after Katrina has raised concerns about toxic materials seeping into water.

After the storm, the debris definition was changed to include furniture, treated wood and asbestos-containing materials.

 

Compacted clay

Nguyen and others have said the landfill doesn't have a sufficient lining to protect the surrounding communities.

Brown disputed that assertion, saying there is a compacted clay liner at the Chef Menteur site that is 10 to 15 feet deep, much more than the 2- or 3-feet liners at similar facilities.

The landfill has prompted environmental justice concerns because the local residential areas are home to mostly minority populations. Village de l'Est, the closest neighborhood, is a mostly Vietnamese community, while eastern New Orleans as a whole is majority African-American.

But Department of Environmental Quality officials sought to counter that accusation Monday, pointing out that the town of Waggaman surrounding an existing landfill on the West Bank that takes hurricane debris also is home to a majority-minority population.

The motion to defer the bill was supported by Reps. Billy Chandler, D-Dry Prong; N.J. Damico, D-Marrero; Hebert; and House Speaker Joe Salter, D-Florien. Rep. Clara Baudoin, D-Carencro, voted against the motion.

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Laura Maggi can be reached at lmaggi@timespicayune.com or at (225) 342-5590.